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January 23, 2006

If you’re looking for instant gratification, online marketing, and in fact marketing of ANY kind, is NOT for you.

Many times, I’ve seen business executives begin an online marketing project with unbridled enthusiasm and stars in their eyes.

They salivate over the “millions of people” they will reach for “minimal cost” and fantasize about the thousands of customers they will get “instantly”.

They’re delusional.

Marketing, whether online or off, is a PROCESS. Instant gratification is RARE. It takes TIME to develop a successful marketing procedure and even longer to perfect it.

The so called “internet gurus” that you see who have these online marketing “systems” took YEARS to develop and perfect them. They may have spent only months developing their software for the system, but they also spent 20 years learning to write ad copy, 15 years learning marketing, and an equal amount of time learning about their market.

They are also continually modifying, testing and updating these systems to keep them working if at all. This is because the internet is constantly changing. There are more savvy internet users than ever and they don’t go for the “guru hype” that was so successful just 6 or 7 years ago.

In short – to repeat – marketing is a PROCESS.

Think of it like dating. If you want someone to fall in love with you, you can’t expect that to happen on the first date. Sometimes you may get lucky and it happens. But this is rare.

The reality more often than not is that you have to woo the person. You have to get to know each other. You have to learn each other’s likes & dislikes, how each other responds to different types of communication and environments. You learn how to make each other happy. You learn what NOT to say and who not to invite to their birthday party. You try different approaches. You make mistakes. You make some hits too.

All of this takes TIME. But eventually, through knowledge, trial, experience and persistence you get it right and perhaps fall madly in love with each other.

And then, AFTER you fall in love, you have to work to MAINTAIN and IMPROVE the relationship. You can't take anything for granted or you'll end up DIVORCED.

And so it is with your prospective customers. It is a PROCESS, not for the impatient or the lazy and definitely not for the faint of heart.

When you have a product or service that you want to market online (or offline) there are several things you will need to find out in order to market it successfully:

What is your product REALLY? – You need to clearly, cleanly and simply know exactly what your product is, what it does and what need(s) it fulfills. These answers should be easy to communicate to anyone in plain English.

What type of person wants your product and what type of person needs your product? These are not always the same. You also may have many different types of people who want or need your product. Each type of person may need to be marketed to differently as each responds differently to certain types of communication. For example what appeals to a 19 year old young man doesn’t necessarily appeal to a 45 year old woman yet they both need & use toothpaste. You would nevertheless, market to each differently.

What do the people who would buy your product or service want from it? What would they expect or require from your product? The answer to this should be known and if it is not known, market research should be done to get the answer. It can be as simple as asking a few people up to conducting comprehensive market research.Once you know the answer, be sure that any marketing done CLEARLY demonstrates that your product or service delivers “it”.

What type of promotion will your products public respond to? E-mail, banners, pop-ups, TV, radio, contests, word-of-mouth? What image appeals to your public? Conservative, hip & trendy, traditional, wholesome? Different people respond to different types of promotion, styles and images. Find out the answer and design your marketing campaigns accordingly.

And last but definitely not least – TEST, TEST, TEST and RE-TEST. Testing is the key to developing any successful marketing campaign. From the above answers, you will get bright ideas on how to market your product. Try them. Test different wording, different marketing vehicles, different publications, web sites, etc. Eventually, something will work. Tweak what works until it works well. Repeat these steps with each tested idea. Eventually you’ll have a number of things that work and there you have your system!

Sounds simple right? Well for some people it is and for some it isn’t. If you have a knack for marketing and plenty of time, you can do this and succeed relatively easily. If not, you may want to study marketing books and materials or hire professionals to help you.

Whatever you decide, be prepared to invest time and other resources in developing this “relationship” so that it is rewarding, long lasting and meaningful and not just a one night stand.

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Toli Cefail is a founding partner at In Touch Media Group and has been a marketing professional for over 20 years. Her experience, both online and off, spans all manner of products, industries and venues including, communications, fashion, corporate services, marketing services, food & beverage, music and more.

November 24, 2005

Star Wars Galaxies – the once fantastic online role playing game where players could live in the Star Wars universe and pursue a myriad of goals much as one does in real life – has been invaded by what appears to be the ‘genius’ behind the creation of the New Coke formula.

If you play the game and have played lately, you’ve probably realized that the party is now basically over. What was once a fun & life-like game where one was free to choose one’s own destiny has become a boxed-in, restrictive, and limited “experience” that is destined for a short playing time.

For those of you who may be too young to remember, or may have forgotten, the New Coke fiasco, I’ll describe it here. Coca Cola, the world’s favorite beverage for about ONE HUDRED YEARS, decided some time ago to change its flavor. Not only did they change the flavor, but they eliminated the original flavor from all store shelves world wide. The only flavor you could buy was the New Coke flavor. Needless to say it was a colossal disaster.

No one liked the new flavor. People were going crazy trying to find the old flavor. Coca Cola was flooded with complaints and inquiries from consumers, distributors & stores. It was a mess. So soon after this blunder, they reintroduced the original flavor with the face saving label “Coca Cola Classic” which, of course, outsold New Coke by leaps and bounds. This is why your coke cans say “Classic” today.

No doubt some “marketing whiz” told the Coke executives, “you’ve got to be ‘fresh’ to keep up with Pepsi!”, “Out with the old. In with the new!”, “We’ve got to do something major!”. I can see the meeting now where this Madison Avenue “whiz kid” pitched this lunacy.

And so it is with Star Wars Galaxies. If you’ve been playing you know now that the entire game has changed. You’re now forced to choose only one of a limited number of professions; your single path is dictated by the game creators; and don’t even get me started on the mouse control changes. (I’m still getting over my headache).

The only good thing about the SWG changes is the new quests and new abilities.

I’ll never understand this obsession to change everything instead of just changing a few things. I will also never understand the tendency of companies to make sweeping decisions that affect their customers (and profits) without first surveying those customers to see what they want exactly.

I’m sure there were some complaints about the time it took to achieve certain game perks and abilities. But did rectifying that require a radical and complete game change? Did that necessitate eliminating skills and abilities players had worked weeks and even months to acquire? I’m certain no.

Hopefully the “new” SWG changes will go the way of New Coke and their “mastermind” will again be looking for work.

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Toli Cefail is a veteran professional marketer for over 20 years, a gamer & party girl :-)

October 28, 2005

To be sure you're reaching your target audience with any marekting effort and internet marketing in particular. It is important to have certain elements in place.

First and foremost is to know who your public is.

Second is to know what they want from your product or service.

Third is to deliver what they want from your advertising all the way through your product or service itself.

How do you know who your public is and what they want from your product or service?

The answer is survey.

Ask your public (customers and prospects) what they want with properly conducted market research in the form of surveys.

While there are many firms that perform market research and customer surveys it is important that the survey you conduct accomplish certain key objectives in order for the information to be practically useful when creating your marketing campaigns and collateral.

1. The survey must acertain what type of people are most likely to want and buy your product. If your product has a dual public, such as with children's products, you must survey both publics (e.g. children and parents).

2. The survey must find out what these people would expect your product to do for them - benefits they expect.

3. The survey must get them to tell you how best to present your product to them. This is a tricky one because your questions have to cut through a person's social acceptance mechanisms to get to what really makes them want a product. This is accomplished through careful question construction and is best done by marketers experienced in writing questions that cut through an individual's social veneer.

4. The survey should also ask questions about such things as pricing, packaging, color and name.

5. And finally, the survey should ask questions that tell you how to position your product so that consumers will find it appealing.

Even if you conduct focus groups and product testing, doing these types of surveys early on in the product development and marketing development stages can save a great deal of time and money. At the very least it will give you a direction to go in which will save many hit and miss attempts at getting your marketing right. ---- Toli Cefail

Toli Cefail is a veteran marketing executive and entrepreneur with more than 20 years experience in marketing both online and off. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer at the leading online marketing firm In Touch Media Group (ITOU.OB) - www.InTouchMediaGroup.com.

October 20, 2005

We advise all of our clients to do one or more surveys prior to begining any marketing campaign to greatly reduce the risk of that campaign not appealing to the target audience (or worse - reaching the wrong audience.

It's always best for these surveys to be conducted by a professional market research firm because asking the right survey questions is just as important as asking questions at all.

If you're considering marketing or selling any product, or are in the process of doing so and haven't done a survey, you might see an improvement in your sales if you invest in properly done market research.

This research should determine what the public is who would like your product, what they would expect from your product, pricing, design and other features they would like as well as information on their opinions of your or a similar product. These are just a few of the things your market research should uncover besides demographic information.

Survey your products before you invest too much and save yourself alot of wasted time and money.

She asserts “Now, you might be asking why I, who was dubbed the ‘Spam Queen” in the Wall Street Journal three years ago, is even bothering to say anything about e-mail?

“Just to set the record straight, I have never advocated spam or sending spam.”

“One reporter said to me ‘Some people consider all bulk email as spam, what do you have to say about that?’ to which I replied, ‘then I guess you'd call me the spam queen" as a joke. ‘

“I advocated email at that time as a very effective medium for small business, which because of its low cost lets small businesses level the playing field against big corporations.”

She continues that legitimate e-mail isn’t getting thru filters and the only “signal” getting thru is the scams being sent from overseas or using illegal methods.

“The simplicity is this—bulk commercial e-mail has gotten to the point where it isn’t effective. We just don’t do it anymore. What’s the point? It doesn’t get a response, and we found people are overloaded with advertising messages and no longer willing to receive more, especially in their inbox, unless they specifically asked for it.”

“As a marketing professional, the only thing that should count for you at the end of the day is effectiveness. Bulk commercial e-mail has turned into the above, a bunch of unprofessional, ineffective scams.”

“In other words, Spam is a four letter word.”

Her solution to the problem of generating web traffic for businesses is a combination of market research, design, search engine marketing (In Touch Media Group was just awarded the highest expert rating given out by Google), search engine publicity and sites like the recently launched www.pixelbay.org that drive traffic directly to her clients sites.

“I’ve been in the marketing game for many years, and finally we’ve found the tools we need to drive traffic to our client’s sites”

For More information and media inquiries please contact:

Laura BetterlyCEO, Intouch Media Group, Inc.

Tel: (727) 465 0925

Email: e-mail protected from spam bots

About In Touch Media Group

In Touch Media Group (ITOU.OB) is an online marketing and PR firm which specializes in generating website visitors, and customers for its business clients using a combination of effective systems, including search engine advertising, publicity, and other marketing services. The company employs online market research to dramatically increase the effectiveness of search engine advertising, targeted publicity, and strategically placed website advertising.

This announcement contains “forward-looking statements.” Words such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect” and other similar expressions as they relate to the Company and its management are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Although the Company and its management believe that the statements contained in this announcement are reasonable, it can give no assurances that such statements will prove correct. Factors that could affect the occurrence of events or results discussed herein are included with those mentioned in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.